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London: Drone sighting interrupts flight operations at Heathrow Airport

News Agencies | Updated on: 9 January 2019, 13:26 IST
Drone

Flight operations were suspended at London's Heathrow Airport for a short while following drone sighting on Tuesday (Local Time).

The Airport, however, resumed flight operations after the brief interruption.


Apologising for the inconvenience, Heathrow airport announced that the departures have been resumed and the airport is working with the Metropolitan Police on the reports of the drone sighting.

"We continue to work with the Met Police on reports of drones at Heathrow. We are working with Air Traffic Control and the Met Police, and have resumed departures out of Heathrow after a short suspension. We will continue to monitor this and apologise to anyone that were affected," Heathrow airport informed on Twitter.

It had earlier twitted about the suspension of operation, informing passengers about the same.

"Heathrow Airport, London, England: We are responding to a drone sighting at Heathrow and are working closely with the metropolitan police to prevent any threat to operational safety. As a precautionary measure, we have stopped departures while we investigate," read a tweet by Heathrow.

Metropolitan Police stated that at 5:05 pm on Tuesday (local time), drones were spotted in the vicinity of the airport.

"At approx 17:05hrs today we received reports of a sighting of a #drone in the vicinity of Heathrow airport. As a precautionary measure, @HeathrowAirport has stopped departures and officers based at Heathrow are currently investigating the reports with colleagues from airport," Metropolitan Police tweeted.

This comes less than a month after drone sightings at the Gatwick Airport where the flights were suspended for over three days. The shut down affected thousands of people at the Gatwick Airport. Two people were held for suspected "criminal use of drones" and were later released by the police.

 

First published: 9 January 2019, 13:26 IST